Sivir
Build Guide by mastajdog

This build has been archived and is for historical display only.

PLEASE NOTE: This build has been archived by the author. They are no longer supporting nor updating this build and it may have become outdated. As such, voting and commenting have been disabled and it no longer appears in regular search results.

Introduction

First, this is my first guide ever. I am known by the username jdogheartveranus (veranus invited me to the game). I am level 30, but want more experience and a team before playing in ranked, so this IS NOT a ranked tested build.

Before we get into the core of the build, a few quick things.

First, tanks. know how to use your tank. nice tanks are Alistar Rammus Amumu Taric Shen. The other tanks are nice, but these will give you the most sinergy (although alistar's Headbutt may give you some problems landing Boomerang Blade. Rammus is my favorite, mostly because of his devistating combo of Powerball Puncturing Taunt which catches up and stuns ppl. most tanks work well, and ap sion, despite it's viability issues, works well. there are other good choices. if you want a full list, please comment so. this is still the introcudtion...

Second, there are two builds for a reason.
Finally, please feel to comment on this build. i do check it regularly, and i will respond. if you don't want it public, feel to message your thoughts to me and i'll get back to you. I HATE TROLLS!!! IF you are not a troll i respect your opinion, flawed or not.-- I've been getting some good feedback and critisisms, and i'm glad to hear it.

Pros / Cons

Pro's

the best kiter ever
you're the best farmer out there
you're a good harasser
you can get many kills
you can move like crazy
you deal tons of damage
if attacking the right target, not affected by Thornmail

cons

you are vulnerable to combined cc effects
Will not be critting about ever (with build 1)
Prone to ganking during/after a push-this is going away, expecially if you have red buff.

builds 1v2

build 1 is still imo how sivir should be played. it gives a good consistent damage, can push well, and is great at kills. build 2 is high burst with rico/bb/triforce damage. not what i like, but since some people love to build an ie... go for it. build 2 is slightly more resillient to burst damage, but build 1 has much better sustain.

expected stats (build 1)

if you are level 30 with full runes and masteries, at level 18 you have:
AD: 372. great deal of it
AS: 1.95 or 2.5 if using On The Hunt
AP: 0. now even less reason to get it
Armor Pen:46% and 20 reduction
Dodge chance: 0. it's getting removed anyway.
Lifesteal: based on stacking The Bloodthirsters, 50-80
Movement speed:372+. no need for boots with your ult and passive
the rest are good.

The abbv's and odd wordsi may use

kiting is the act of hitting an enemy champion while running in order to slow them down. in sivir's case, especially with red buff, she does well with that. Frozen Mallet slows the first champ by a good deal and Fleet of Foot has you running great.

Acceptable alternatives are

Masteries

the reason for most of my masteries are apparent. offense is for straight offense. build one focuses on aa and bb damage, while two also goes for some crits. the utility is to help with the mana problems. getting improved flash is great, while improved back time can help as well. then buff duration as it's the best 1-point spec and helps if you take red. sorry, still doesn't effect baron's.

Skill Sequence

If you're facing an annoying nuke such as Veigar, you might have to level up Spell Shield earlier to stop him, and definently if facing kat solo mid. it can be done. just wait to see her channeling for her q, and hit e. than throw the free mana right back with Boomerang Blade. That being said, your job is to hit and Boomerang Blade is how you hit hard. A further warning - against characters like Teemo Spell Shield will have no effect on his poison ecause it doesn't block damage over time or toggle spells (alhtough it does block Caitlyn's yordle traps.and sadly, as much as they hurt, it still doesn't block tower shots. that's what Fleet of Foot is for.

i'm sure it looks weird. you max bb first. now moreso then ever, it's the most powerful level 9 nuke. i go for spell shield next until it's time for teamfights. then, you want to focus Ricochet because it will help you much more than a few seconds of Spell Shield. then, finish maxing spell shield. and ofc, On The Hunt whenever possible

Items-build 1

My items are fairly set in stone. Main reason: i've found that they work the best on sivir as i play her.

If you are having problems with Jax or other dodgers Sword of the Divine may work instead of Phantom Dancer. However, due to a change from Phantom Dancer no longer providing dodge and the almost total removal of it now, jax (who never shows up bot or mid, which is where you belong) is the only reason to get it.

Also, criting isn't the way to go. Critical chance is worthless on sivir because even if your ad is 200 and you crit a minion for 400, the next minion that that rico's to only gets hit for 160.-but people will say it is standard. feel that way? see build 2

Boots

or Mercury's Treads are an option if you're getting hit hard in physical damage or magic damage (aka the entire other team or their only good player is dealing this type of damage exclusively). Boots of Swiftness no. these make your ult usless. second, you've also got them slowed.... so.... NO.. if you wanted any other boots, go back to playing. most of this guide is designed for those that understand high level concepts. end game, you're going to be moving fast enough to not need them anyway. if you need ccr, grab a Cloak and Dagger. armor? grab ninja tabi while you can, they're running away.

Rejected items.

Mana regen

simply should not be necessary. i used to play her with a manamume, but now, she doesn't need it.

we aren't criting, and you get more damage from The Bloodthirster anyway (minion kills count as kills for it).

(a) it's an on hit effect (b) it doesn't deal nearly enough ad or as (c) no lifesteal

the main reason to buy it is it's on-hit effect.

AS

(a) still don't need mana regen (b) we don't need the ap

situational items-build 1

You have 2 things you can replace with these. the first is the second bloodthirster in the list. the next one is the frozen mallet. these items are not vital. preferred highly, but not vital.
First, i list the defensive items, which should take priority. second, i list the offensive item situationals.

Defensive remedies:
Tons of nukers? wanna tick em off? get a double spell shield with Banshee's Veil. just be sure not to use Spell Shield while this shield's up.

Tons of ad champs like you? try a Frozen Heart or a Thornmail. frozen heart would be my preference, but it's a close call.

Tons of both? skip the offensive remedies and get both.

Below are the offensive remedies.

Situational items

They're all stacking armor

Remedy: deal with it. if 20 flat reduction and 46% pen doesn't do enough, they shouldn't be dealing any damage.
They're all stacking MR-my bb does nothing.

Remedy- Why do you even care by now?? get with the times... bb deals physical damage

They're stacking ARMOR AND MR LIKE CRAZY

solution

go push some towers, farm up some cash, and kill them. you shouldn't care at this point in time.

items-build 2

Trinity Force is for the high burst damage. The Bloodthirster is a great raw damage item for that burst. a Phantom Dancer adds more crc and great amounts of attack speed, for more sustained damage. the Banshee's Veil helps keep you alive, and the double spell block is great for trolling with. Last Whisper makes your enemies wisper their last, as you eat their triple thornmails. and, the Infinity Edge makes you crit like a bawss and adds more burst damage.

situational items-build 2

most of the situational items are the same as build 1, with a few exceptions.

if there are more people in your lane from the ememy's team than yours, don't
if you are at less than half health and your enemy's present, don't.
if the enemy's jungler's location unknown, don't push
if anybody from the nearby lanes is mia, don't push
don't push unless all 5 enemies are dead/visible
if you have killed your lanemates, all above criteria are met, and you can do it safely, push for the turreet
if there's an tower asking for help and one of your laning opponnent's dead, go do it.
when in doubt, ask your team if it's safe. if they don't reply, assume they're too busy fighting to answer and don't.
when getting harassed, don't push
if you just won a teamfight, push!!!

pushing's kinda your job. however, in the laning phase, it's a death invite. afterwards, try to do it safely. taking towers leads to inhibitors leads to nexuses leads to game over. just do it.

Farming

Early game

hang out with your tank/support and auto-attack the minions. be sure to let your tank get some last hits (1 a minute is fine. Use Boomerang Blade if they're all at about low enough health.

Mid game
eat towers. and minions. and red buff. and champs. EAT ALL THE THINGS

Late game

Ricochet + 3 seconds = /all what minions did you have there?
and ofc most of the above

Let your tank have a wave, then disintrigate the next. if you're at a nexus, (like you should be) then disreguard the above. Leave rico on and spam bb until they're gone. then either take their nexus or buy parts to your items.

spell shield

i don't have a chance at getting the best guide on that. the best guide can be found at:here this is quite honestly, the best, most comprehensive guide for sivir's spell shield out there. however, i still feel that i have a better build and thus i provided you this helpful link. also see his original link to a LoL forum

but here's the tldr: attack enhancers, such as Trinity Force Wuju Style or Vorpal Spikes can't be blocked. toggles, such as Despair, can't be blocked. most, if not all, aoe casts such as Tantrum (one instance, not a toggle), or a single champion dot, such as Ignite or Blaze, will be blocked. spells that buff an enemy champion, be it a heal, damage lowerer, ect, but don't damage you, won't be blocked.

WHAT DOES GET BLOCKED IS ALWAYS GOING TO BE THOSE SPELLS THAT YOU CAN ONLY GET ONCE PER CAST. most other things won't be blocked.

that might be the reason for karthus's Wall of Pain not being blocked. however, with ss up, you can run through Event Horizon... once. check if you're worried about a specific champ/spell.

Quick tips to make the game more fun

/t /j /d /l
those will make waiting for ganks much more fun. be sure to hit enter after you type those.
/t makes your character say something
/j makes your character joke
/d makes your character dance (kog'maw has the best dance out there)
/l makes your character lauch
and /all (or shift enter on your keyboard) followed by what you want to say makes it go to both teams

Dodge on sivir

(From what i've seen, dodge is being pushed out of the meta-game due to it's ability to own other champs. for example, give sivir 3 phamtom dancers back when they had dodge, and she could solo towers easily because less than one-fourth of it's attacks would hit. it's very difficult, and hence SoTD was made to counter it. there's a counter to everything in lol.

but anyway, if you get dodge seals, you can have nearly a 50% dodge chance while running. this is very powerful when soloing towers, as their main strength comes from consecuitive hits, as each subsiquent time it hits it deals 10% more damage. this is the main reason for dodge.

for the average champ, say alistar, armor seals are better early on since they do more mitigation. however, once it gets noticable, dodge seals are better, and the more dodge you have, the more reliable it is.

Dodge has a complex formula: it's based on the hit chance, not the miss chance. so if with sivir's passive, i have a 25% dodge chance, then i'll get hit .75 of the time. then there's my .9325 chance from seals. those multiply, and you subtract that from one to get your dodge chance. that, with 0 masteries or items (but level 18) would get you a 69.9375% chance of getting hit, or a 30% dodge chance. adding in ninja tabi and the defense masteries increases the chance to around 46%. )

or that's how it used to be. now, she has no passive dodge chance, so according to the wonder of charts, searz's complete graphing resource, until 250+ armor, dodge is way worse than armor. case closed

Unique Skills

Sivir is 1 of 2 champions i know with a built in timable spell block. (the other is nocturn's Shroud of Darkness, which i prefer... but i'm not RIOT, so... what do they care about what i think

Her Boomerang Blade is an incredible skill shot, especially because you can change the aim on the way back.

Ricochet makes you arguably the best farmer in the league. your only competition will be Ashe and her Volley (despite it's 4 second cd) and Heimerdinger and his turrets.
the change made it more burst, but combined with Boomerang Blade, you can now either burst a champ in 2-3 seconds or push a lane and 3 towers in 2 minutes.

Your ultimate has many uses. (a) team fight. Your main priority for this, this can give you a big advantage early on with the increased attack speed. it also can enable the survivors of a loosing side to run. (b) with flash to escape ganks - your passive is making this mostly unnecessary (c) to get to a team fight. it provides insane mobility, and with it few champions can outrun your team. since the buff affects champs who enter it's range while it's active, don't worry about leaving that.

Little known thing about Ricochet... if you're chasing a champ past one of their towers, you can hit the tower and it will rico to the champ if they're the only one around. I've gotten a few kills that way, even if they're out of the range of bb
defensive capabilities:

Gameplay/team role

You are a ranged ad carry. lets get that out there. however, you are the only ranged ad carry ever that can do this role: destroying 5 champions and a tower SIMULTAINIOUSLY. your two attack spells, Boomerang Blade and Ricochet tell me that. Ricochet, besides making you farm and push like crazy, is also possibly the BEST multi-champ spell. it's guaranteed hits on 6 simultanious targets. it does proc off towers. out in the jungle, it can hit 3 champs and grab you blue buff simultaniously.

Boomerang Blade is where "line them up, shoot them down" came from. with a nice range and good aim, you can hit many people with it. it also has one great function: it, combined with an aa and rico, can hit for 2k damage with in the time it takes bb to return to you. if they think that you are a standard ad carry, they're gonna be surprised when they get NAILED with it. and ofc, your normal auto-attacks, at the tune of 750 dps, are gonna be hurting them.

(taken with the understanding that that is before armor, which will not be affecting you overly, but expect those numbers to be down 20-50%)

teamfight: don't initiate. right after the initiate happens, if it's full blown, On The Hunt immediately can give you a great advantage. a bonus 20 attack speed for some champions is not to be "misunderestimated." this can make a fight yours, boosting the other team's rate of demise when your cho's throwing out a set of Vorpal Spikes every second and Master Yi's running at 700 and hitting 1000 crits 2.5 times a second for example. try to focus either the ad carry or the ap carry if you can do so without entering the midst of their team. take the closer one or the lower hp one. keep in mind that you are squishy

People you can't lane against

Heimerdinger. no. he stays WAY too far back for you to touch him, and his turrets will drive you crazy. mord. lol jk. he's up as crazy now. Alistar is the best distuptor in the league and his ult will drive you up a wall. he can also heal faster than you can bb him. Amumu too many stuns. next . Nunu he's got too much disruption. you need a rythim. YOU CAN ONLY FACE THESE CHARACTER IN A LANE IF YOU HAVE A CRAZY DISRUPTOR TANK WITH YOU (aka, one of the characters listed above.) and Nasus has a free sweet exhaust called Wither that IS YOUR BANE

note that most of those are solo tops, who you shouldn't be facing, junglers, who belong in the jungle and you should just kite away from, or supports, who shouldn't be bothering you too much anyway. it's the ap cows that get annoying.

To answer some questions.

why don't you end with boots? you're running fast enough. most games, if i get full items, i sell boots. only since i still have 380+ms, which is quite enough, would i do that.

why don't you perfer crit sivir? well, neither Boomerang Blade nor Ricochet proc crits, and they are your main damage dealer. however, with trit force, it's not bad, so i added that for you crit/burst or it sucks people

Any more questions, please PM me or comment with them.

edits

edits may be forthcoming, but so far all i've done is change my summonner level to 30 (finally got it) so excited by that one. 8/18/2011

8/20/2011: finished above, and now working on removing "walls of text" and making it easier to read. most core content unchanged, however. changed glyphs from 4 clarity and 5 magic pen to 9 flat mana/5. added section on actual stats due to mobafire's problems calculating them

8/26/2011-now has a score in top 10! thanks guys!

9/6/11 back out of top 10 due to sivir mass upvoting, but still working on it. also adding situational items and a preview of my next quest.

10/2/11 back in , at #7. thanks again. working on summonner spells thanks to vVv Anaxamander and changing runes to reflect lack of defense/mr. edited explinations under skill sequence and added "expected stats section" because of moba's problems with stats. also deleted normal game stats, as i didn't remember it and the expected stats section is more complete and in a better place. added a pushing warning section

10/7/11 #4. glad to see it's liked. i've gotten some questions, so i'll try to explain them. most are centered around not making my tear to a manamume early game.

10/20/11 added more coding from a tip from icuonuez. also have added signs

11/16/11. added season 2 masteries, but help will be needed.

11/23/11 changed summoner spells to tele/flash

12/14/11 reavmped to account for sivir remake

Finally

thanks for taking the time to read this. please give me a thumb's up if you liked it. any suggestions will be taken into consideration, although this build has served me well. please don't comment and then + or - because i don't want to have to deal with re-posting. I hope this build works for you too.

and btw, signs (and con symbol) were by me, and i also do sign and wallpapers if you're interested. the random pictures were memes, if you don't know what those are, memebase is for you.

League of Legends is a team based, real time strategy game set in a mythical world of swords & magic where epic battles decide the fate of mystical nations. Game players take on the role of a Summoner who conjures and controls champions to fight for them at the Institute of War. During game play champions gain experience and items to enhance their skills and abilities. How players develop and play their champions can be the difference between a crushing defeat or a glorious victory!